I Aim to Misbehave
by White Squirrel
Summary: Harry Potter escapes from Earth-That-Was via magitech, but goes missing. When he is finally unfrozen in the 26th century, he faces a new oppressive regime in the form of the Alliance while he tries to find the lost magical community in the Verse. Epilogue-compliant, No Power in the 'Verse-compliant.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling, and Firefly and Serenity belong to Joss Whedon.

Part of this chapter is quoted from the _Serenity_ film.

A/N: Hark! A crossover! This story is an homage to nonjon's _Brown Coat, Green Eyes_. That is an excellent story in and of itself, and I definitely recommend it, but I feel like it had some obvious missed potential, which I have tried to rectify here. This story is Epilogue-compliant for _Harry Potter_ , but NOT _Cursed Child-_ compliant. It also follows on from _No Power in the_ _'Verse_ in…well, the Verse, and I drew on _The Verse in Numbers_ for back-story.

This will _not_ be an actively-updated story for the foreseeable future, but I wanted to put the chapter I had written out there.

* * *

 **Prologue**

 _Earth_

 _2098_

It had been a hard century, that was for sure.

It had started out so well. Everyone had celebrated after the defeat of Voldemort, and the magical world was free again. Marriages were celebrated, children were born, grew up, got married, and had children of their own. Life was good for witches and wizards everywhere, and no one, not even the muggle-born ten percent of the population, paid attention to the disaster that was brewing in the muggle world until it was too late.

In 2030, after years of bizarre weather and natural disasters that even wizards couldn't ignore, the news broke: irreversible environmental collapse was coming by the end of the century.

All at once, all of the muggles' worst fears started coming true, and wizards found themselves scrambling to catch up with their paltry knowledge of muggle science just to understand what was happening to their world. The ocean food chain and global biodiversity were collapsing. The oceanic currents stalled, turning the breadbasket of the world cold and dry. Seafloor methane deposits were released by the gigatonne, warming the planet faster than anyone expected. Desertification ran rampant. Droughts, floods, wildfires, tornadoes, and cyclones all hit hard in places where they'd never been seen before. Agricultural yields plummeted.

Wizards, being few in number and supported by magic, were easily capable of sustaining themselves and most of the magical plant and animal species on their own. But as in the World Wars a century earlier, they were not content to sit idly by and watch the world burn. Hermione Granger and others like her led the charge—muggle-borns and half-bloods well versed in the sciences. Whilst still maintaining the Statute of Secrecy, they worked behind the scenes, using magic to advance non-magical science. Hermione herself was brilliant. Just the research she could make public netted her a Nobel Prize, and the world would have spoken her name in the same breath as Newton and Einstein if they could have known the full truth.

For a moment, it seemed like their work had paid off. By 2037, wizards had helped muggles develop terraforming technology that would have been unimaginable a decade earlier. But by 2048, it was clear that it was too late to save Earth. There was no way to get the terraforming to take hold until after the environmental crisis had run its course and the climate stabilised again. Much of the world's population despaired while the world's governments threw themselves into Plan B: evacuate the planet.

It was at that point that many wizards decided to close off their own world and batten down the proverbial hatches. Despite their recent forays into science, most wizards barely understood the meaning of space travel and would never think of actually doing it.

But Harry Potter was not one of those wizards.

Harry Potter, reluctant hero, reluctant leader, and now reluctant motivator to action, had long since despaired of ever living a normal life. It was strange that a man who had been treated worse by muggles than ninety-nine wizards out of a hundred would become one of their biggest champions, but he and his friends, pureblood and muggle-born alike, were people who understood the value of all human life. And moreover, after his decade of living as a muggle as a boy, despite the abuse and neglect, the wizarding world had failed to stamp out the quintessential muggle dream in him of venturing to the stars.

Harry threw his support behind the evacuation effort—both for wizards to continue helping the muggles, and to go along for the ride, saying there was nothing left for them on Earth. About half of the magical world rallied behind him, and that made all the difference.

Merlin, it was hard, though, Harry often thought as he watched the world crumble around him. It got even harder as he saw all the people he cared about die of either age or the rising tide of violence, while he went on, for reasons that he barely understood, still nearly as young and strong as the day Voldemort was killed.

Hermione had been the first of his close friends to go. Despite their best efforts to get her to slow down, she had worked herself to death at the age of ninety-four, barely living long enough to realise her dream of seeing the first interstellar terraforming ships launch toward the 34 Tauri system. In retrospect, Harry thought, it was probably kinder that way to her and Ron, who died of grief shortly thereafter, since just two years later, the Four Horseman started their long, bloody ride.

Faced with near certain-death if they stayed (the most optimistic estimates said Earth could only support half a billion people now), the human race abandoned normal life, stopped bothering about the environment entirely, and tore down its great cities to build ark ships. Within two decades, plague, war, famine, and low birth rates had caused the population to fall to one billion and still dropping fast. And again, wizards were not unaffected. Neville was killed by raiders in the Amazon whilst leading a team to try to collect the last undocumented magical plant species. Luna was lost to one of the many tropical fevers that tore through the once-temperate zones faster than even magical healing could keep up. Harry himself had endured the grief of losing a son and two grandchildren in the peacekeeping forces. And Ginny—his Ginny, who he had made sure had never wanted for anything, succumbed to old age at a hundred and ten. It was the first of September, 2091. Fate had a sick sense of humour.

Now, seven years after losing his wife, Harry's own words came back to him. His friends were all gone, and he had sent what was left of his family away on the first wave of arks. He had intended to stay behind and oversee the rest of the evacuation, but the wizards could handle themselves by now—now that there wasn't much left of humanity outside the ark fleet. He had been right; there was nothing left for him there.

In the end, the one thing he and Hermione had felt really guilty about was that the muggles were forced to travel on generation ships for the hundred and twenty years it would take to reach "The Verse", while with the aid of magic to boost the technology, still hidden behind the Statute of Secrecy, wizards had the option of going on sleeper ships and seeing their new home with their own eyes. It wasn't fair, but not even the great Harry Potter could overturn that law.

Perhaps Rose Granger-Weasley could, if she lived long enough. Once the arks left, there would be half a million wizards and only a few million muggles left on the planet, few enough to maintain a sustainable population out in the wastelands—one that could become majority-magical within a few generations if they played their cards right. Harry really thought Rose had a decent chance of abolishing the Statute of Secrecy in that brave new world if she didn't drive herself to the same fate as her mother.

But as for Harry, after the century he'd had, he was too old and tired for that kind of work—not in his body, but in his soul. In the end, he said goodbye to Rose and departed Earth on the magical sleeper ship _Phoenix Fire_ on the second of May, 2098.

* * *

 _Somewhere in the Black_

 _2514_

 _Three years after the Battle of Serenity Valley_

The first thing Harry felt when he awoke was cold.

It took him a minute as his brain figuratively rebooted to realise that was a bad sign on a spaceship. He'd tested the magical stasis pods back on Earth, and they weren't supposed to feel like that coming out of them. He was freezing cold, his limbs were stiff and numb, and he was totally blind. On instinct, he reached for his wand, but his fingers wouldn't obey. All he could do was slap his limp hand across the handle and push as much magic as he could through it, focusing on heat.

And he was on fire.

He let out a scream of agony, although it didn't sound much like a scream—more like a pained whine that sounded like a dying cat. He let go of the magic and panted for breath.

For a minute, all he could do was lie there, but slowly, he came to realise that he must not have been actually on fire because the feeling was returning to his limbs. He also thought he could see a vague light now. He carefully touched his wand again and focused on light instead of heat. Yes, there was definitely a glow. It was pale and blurry, but it was there.

Harry blinked his eyes a few times, and the world became clearer—a little. It looked like he was still in his stasis pod. Worryingly, it also looked like it wasn't functioning and hadn't been for some time. The walls were covered in ice. His wand was covered in ice. (He hoped it wasn't damaged.) His _body_ was covered in ice. It was evident that he had only felt like he was on fire from the Warming Charm because he was severely hypothermic. And he most definitely needed to warm up. Pushing through the pain, he applied the Warming Charm again.

It took several minutes before his body felt like it was at a natural temperature, and he could take better stock of his surroundings: still in the pod, yes, but he'd managed to melt the ice and make himself semi-comfortable. In the warmth, his senses seemed to be sharpened back to normal. A Diagnostic Charm showed nothing seriously wrong with him apart from his usual baseline.

"How the hell am I still alive?" he said—or tried to. It came out as more of a raspy whisper.

If Rose were here, she could have figured out the answer in seconds, but Harry, as gifted as he was, didn't have her Granger-Weasley brains. As he reasoned his way through it, he decided that the power to the stasis pod must have failed at some point _en route_. But when? Did he still have many years before reaching 34 Tauri? Were they already there? Had the entire ship failed, or was it just him?

Perhaps most importantly, what were the conditions outside the pod?

The air was growing stale. There was no indication at all that the pod was working. He had to get out quickly. Taking into account that the rest of the ship might be not just frozen, but also airless, Harry took precautions. He cast a modified Air Shell Charm around himself—like a Bubblehead Charm, but extending in a nearly skin-tight bubble all over his body. The charm would deliver air at normal pressure, changing to pure oxygen at one quarter pressure in a vacuum to make it easier to maintain. He also kept a Warming Charm continuously fed with magic to keep him from freezing to death.

 _Alohomora_ did nothing. The pod was frozen shut. Harry considered his options. A Banishing Charm or Blasting Curse would be too dangerous in such a confined space. A Cutting Charm would take time to do safely. He couldn't Apparate without knowing the conditions outside. Finally, he went with the "low-tech" solution: he cast the Softening Charm at the lid of the pod until he could punch his way out.

Tearing his way out of the stasis pod, Harry looked around and took stock of the situation. The ship was still pressurised, and it even had emergency power. But when he burnt away the frost, one look at the other pods told him the worst had happened: they were dead. All of them. He recoiled and felt bile rising from his stomach. The other pods held nothing but freeze-dried mummies. They must have been without power for _years_.

Something didn't add up. Emergency power didn't last long enough to keep the ship warm indefinitely, and while the air was bitterly cold, the oxygen wasn't frozen to the deck plates. That meant they'd either made it to 34 Tauri and were in sunlight, or something had knocked the power out for a long time in deep space, and then something equally mysterious turned the heat back on.

He tried accessing a computer terminal and was relieved to find it still functional. Looking at the recent automated logs let him work out roughly what had happened. The ship had made it, but had hit a debris stream from a comet coming into the system, and thanks to that one in a million chance, everyone died. Main power was lost. Propulsion was lost. Emergency power—huh, only kicked back on just now. He didn't know how long it had been out. Even the clocks had failed, and with the total power loss, all of the pods had failed, even with magic. He hadn't really been close to anyone on the _Phoenix Fire_ , but it still hurt. And meanwhile, he had somehow survived.

"Dammit," he rasped, "I thought I was _done_ with that bloody Potter luck."

Harry still wasn't entirely sure how he was still alive. He really, _really_ hoped he wasn't somehow immortal—not after he'd lost nearly everyone he cared about. But his magic had been abnormally powerful ever since he defeated Voldemort. He could only guess that when the power failed while he was in stasis, his magic reached out and protected him. It wouldn't even have been that difficult. The reason flash freezing killed was because of ice crystals forming in the cells. If his magic prevented that somehow, he could have frozen solid and unfrozen once the heat came back on with no ill effects. He remembered Hermione talking about a species of frog that could do that naturally when they were first researching stasis magitech.

To be honest, he wasn't sure if he liked the idea of being immune to freezing to death, either. It felt kind of like cheating. And Merlin knew what else he was immune to.

Well, there was no use standing around and letting himself freeze again. Since he was actually in the 34 Tauri system—"The Verse"—he could at least send out a distress signal and hope someone noticed and picked him up before the emergency power ran out. He stumbled through the _Phoenix Fire_ _'s_ frozen stasis pod bays, trying not to think about all the lives that had been lost. As he approached the bridge, though, he heard something that was either very good or very bad. There were voices up there.

"Well, the bad news is, this junker's not going anywhere," the first voice said. It was unfamiliar, and Harry couldn't place the accent—maybe Texas or somewhere thereabouts. It certainly didn't match anyone he knew on the ship. "Drive's completely shot. Hit by a comet, looks like. No way we're gonna get her closer to the Core except by cutting her up for scrap…The good news? We weren't off the mark at all. This is a _genu-ine_ Earth-That-Was colony ship, and most of the artifacts were well-preserved by the cold."

"So you're sayin' were rich?" a second voice said.

"Oh, like _hell_ we're rich."

Harry winced at the sound of cheering. At least four of them, probably not more than six, but there could be more wherever they'd come from. From the way they were talking, it wasn't hard to fill in the blanks. The _Phoenix Fire_ had been adrift for a long time—maybe decades—until one day, a salvage ship stumbled upon it, hoping to make a quick galleon or whatever currency they used around here selling off the now-antique artifacts in the hold. When they came on board, they had restarted the emergency power…and woken him up.

He felt a momentary surge of anger. This was _his_ ship with _his_ people entombed here. But he dropped that line of thought for more practical considerations. The ship was garbage, and these scrap-haulers were probably the only people for a hundred million miles who could help him. He'd have to introduce himself and ask for help. He thought for a minute as he listened, trying to decide how to play it.

Ah, screw it. He had a wand and nothing to lose.

"Hey, ever hear of knocking?" he said as he stepped onto the bridge.

"Whoa!" There was a loud shout, and Harry immediately saw five guns pointed at him. He threw up a strong Shield Charm on general principle and got a good look at the intruders. They were dressed shabbily, and in a style that looked half-Earth Spacer and half-cowboy. Three of them wore long, brown coats that were vaguely reminiscent of the Auror robes he remembered from his youth, and the man who looked to be in charge wore an actual cowboy hat.

They were a mix of Caucasian and Chinese heritage, which wasn't surprising. Most of the people on the Arks had been. Idly, he realised that it was much warmer in this part of the ship. They must have been here at least long enough to warm it up again.

Finally, the man in the cowboy hat spoke: "Damn, is that a personal force field?"

"Um…Maybe," Harry said.

"Captain, somethin's up," the large Chinese man behind Cowboy Hat said. "There's no way this guy got here by ship unless he autoparked it a thousand miles out and turned the heat off."

"Yeah, good point, Chao," the captain agreed. He kept his gun trained on Harry. "Who are you and how did you get here?"

Harry likewise kept his Shield Charm up. "I unfroze when you turned the heat back on," he said.

"Unfroze?" the captain said. "You saying you're from the original crew or something?"

"Yep, that's me. You ever hear of Harry Potter?" He had been known at least a little in the muggle world as one of the organisers of the Arks and as a friend of the great Hermione Granger.

"Uh, no," the captain said.

"Oh…Well, can you tell me what year it is, then?"

"What year? What year do _you_ think it is?"

"It's supposed to be 2218, but I think I've been lost for a while."

"2218? Like hell," Chao said. "This some kind of Alliance sting?"

"What's the Alliance?" Harry said.

All five of them stopped cold. "What's the Alliance?" the captain said. "You stupid or something?" He examined the look on Harry's face, and his eyes widened. "Shoot, you _are_ from the original crew, aren't you? No one could fake bein' that stupid."

"That's impossible!" a woman with the rifle said. "Sleeper ships weren't developed until centuries after the Exodus from Earth-That-Was."

"Secret experimental prototype," Harry said. "And what do you mean, centuries? What year is it?"

"It's 2514, buddy. You're three hundred years late to the party."

"2514? Bloody hell! I knew I'd drifted a while, but…Damn, that means everyone from Earth is long dead, now."

The man on the far end spoke up, saying, "So you _are_ from Earth-That-Was?" He was slight, older than the others, and had a scholarly tone that reminded him just a tiny bit of Albus Dumbledore.

"Earth-That-Was?" Harry said. "What kind of a name is that? I hate hyphenated names. It's always Boy-Who-Lived this and You-Know-Who that. I'm from Earth, full stop. England, to be exact. As far as I know, it's still Earth-That- _Is_. It's just in bad shape."

All five of the intruders were silent again. It took awhile, but finally, the captain said, "You really believe that don't you? Sorry to tell you this, but Earth's dead, son. Was dead before the Arks even got here. Whatever life you had back there, you're gonna have to start over no matter what year it is."

"Or rather, we'll start it for you," the big man in the back said with a nasty laugh.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry said.

"Those shields don't last long, do they? We've got all day."

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

"Well, you _are_ from Earth-That-Was," the captain said. "You remember what it was like. You know what all the artifacts are, how they work." He got a greedy grin on his face. "That makes you _valuable_ , don't it?"

Harry groaned and rolled his eyes. "And that makes you _stupid_ , don't it?" he mocked him. " _Stupefy!_ "

In seconds, all five raiders were unconscious on the ground. An average wizard would have been at a severe disadvantage going up against five muggles with guns, but Harry hadn't studied wandless magic extensively over the past century for nothing. With that done, it wasn't hard to modify their memories to think he was a paying passenger…Except, after he did that, he smacked himself and tweaked them again. He was a solo spacefarer who had tipped the crew off to the wreck and asked them to help him salvage it. That way, he got his pick of the "artifacts" and an equal share of the sales, which would let him keep all the important and magical stuff and give him enough money to last him a while. The crew should be be a lot nicer to him that way, too. Probably.

He woke them up and asked them to escort him back to their ship for some "equipment". There was some confusion when the other two members of the crew came out to meet them, but he quickly took care of them too, and he was in.

Over the next week, Harry helpfully pointed out all of the useful artifacts on the ship, being careful to secret away anything with still-active magic for himself, and they stripped the _Phoenix Fire_ of everything valuable. In the meantime, he quietly versed himself in the history of the—well—The Verse, so he wouldn't act like he'd been living under a rock for the past four hundred years.

Arks departed on schedule. Good. All contact with Earth lost by 2110, remaining population presumed destroyed—although he personally suspected different. Arrived on schedule at 34 Tauri. First colonies terraformed and occupied by 2225. Rapid advances in terraforming technology and… _helioforming?_ What the hell? Gravity manipulation and nanocompression somehow let them colonise small moons and turn brown dwarfs into mini-protostars. Climate feedback control and solar lensing let them terraform worlds that should have been ice cold or blazing hot. Hermione had thought that kind of stuff was a pipe dream. So had Rose. Bloody hell, if they'd had the technology of 2250 back in 2050, they could have saved Earth. Had anyone ever gone back? Nope, no money for it, nothing to gain from it, as far as anyone knew. He was angry about that at first, but he supposed he couldn't blame them when the trip took a hundred and twenty years each way to start with.

The history of the last century wasn't as rosy. The oldest colonies were already getting mined out and were pushing farther and farther towards the Rim for resources. Same old story. And there was a war. Same old story there, too. Eight years ago, the Central Planets decided to consolidate their rule over the entire Verse. It took them five years, but they did it. Every inhabited world was now at least nominally under the Alliance's rule. The rebels had been called Browncoats and had fared very badly at the end. Some of them were now his new hosts. All in all, they weren't too bad a sort of people to run around with if you got on their good side—you know, except for the wanting to sell him part. But the more he learnt about the Alliance, the more he began to see the Browncoats as disaffected freedom fighters, so after a while, he stopped complaining.

Oh, and there were these psycho cannibal rage monsters called Reavers showing up out of nowhere on the Rim in the past few years. Joy.

Once they made port, the crew sold their haul, and Harry took his share and went on his way. He was bound for the Core. He didn't much like what he saw of the Alliance, but if he was going to find the magical community again, it would be on the Core Worlds.

* * *

 _Rubicon_

 _2519_

" _It's the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that WE added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's 30 million people here, and they all just let themselves die."_

" _Daxiang daozhashi de la duzi!"_ Harry cursed, echoing the sentiments of many on the street watching the unexpected broadcast. Harry was no stranger to the fact that the Alliance got into some dirty dealings, but until now, he really hadn't thought it was his problem. Yes, they were an oppressive government, and they personally grated on him, but he never saw them as much worse than half the other governments he'd lived under—and that wasn't even counting the mess that was Earth-That-Was during the evacuation. But he hadn't realised until now just how much worse the Alliance was capable of.

This was the _real_ Orwellian stuff—not just oppressing people, not just watching their every move, but trying to make them into obedient servants by taking away their free will. He'd bet his life that the phrase "For the Greater Good" was being uttered in the halls of the Alliance government.

He couldn't go on like this.

Not that he had much reason to. Five years on, his search for the magical community in the Central Planets had turned up jack squat. He'd been all over Londinium and Sihnon, and after that Ariel and Bellerophon, and then skipped right out to Persephone. When that didn't turn up anything, he went back and checked every godforsaken uninhabited moon in the Core and a fair few asteroids besides, thinking the wizards might have set aside a whole world for themselves, hidden from muggles, but there was nothing. On Earth-That-Was, wizards almost always made it pretty easy for a stranded witch or wizard to find a magical government office in a capital city. They couldn't just Fidelius the whole magical community or something crazy like that because they would have to include muggle-borns and visitors somehow. But he'd found nothing—nothing but ancient artifacts cast aside or belonging to families who had long forgotten their significance.

He'd built up a fair collection that way. He used a spell Rose had invented that was basically a magical radar pulse to find any traces of the wizarding world. On Earth-That-Was, it had been a near-useless curiosity with all the magic about. In the Verse? He could find old wands and brooms and skeletons of magical creatures from as far as a mile away (as long as he had the complicated runic receiver it required—and if there were no electrical storms in the area). One of his excursions had even netted him a Pensieve. But there were no wizards—barely even a memory of them, and those memories were usually of someone's grandfather's grandfather performing mere parlour tricks that he could never confirm as the real deal. After five years of fruitless searching, his money was running low. He was starting to have to do odd jobs just to keep up.

And now, Miranda.

It wasn't until a week later that he made the connection to the Tams.

The one credible bit of evidence for magic surviving in the Verse to the present day were the "Readers"—a mysterious sort of combination Seer and Legilimens that were highly sought after by the Alliance at the highest, most secretive levels. Many people didn't even believe Readers existed, but then, a lot of people in the Core didn't believe in the Reavers, either.

River Tam was said to be a Reader, and even more interestingly, she had escaped government custody from a classified facility, or so said the Alliance database he'd hacked into. Harry had followed the Tams' story from a distance since shortly after they vanished from custody. He'd even considered going to look for them himself, but they were surely far in the Rim by the time he'd heard about it, there were easier targets for his search in the Central Planets.

One thing got to him, though: the more he looked, the more it seemed as if the Tams were leaving a trail of blood in their wake. A few seemingly-unrelated assassinations on Regina, an entire police department on Ariel wiped out in an apparent terrorist attack, some mysterious deaths on Whitefall—nothing too strange, but it all looked a little fishy, and after so many years as an Auror, his instincts were very good.

He didn't make the connection until after Miranda, though. It took some more hacking and digging, but he eventually concluded that River Tam had Read the secret of Miranda from some government official's mind, and they wanted so badly to cover it up that they went out and killed dozens of their own people whom they thought she _might_ have told something incriminating.

Well, that was it. He was done with the Alliance, and if the wizarding community was smart, they'd feel the same way. With any luck, they had and moved the Rim ages ago. And even if they hadn't, he had to admit the Tams were his best lead right now. He'd be setting himself against the Alliance going after them, but he was sure he'd wind up on the wrong side of them sooner or later. He'd seen the pattern too many times. The Alliance would keep trying to bring the people to heel for as long as— _let_ _'s just say, as long as it takes for the message to—sink in._

"Well, then," Harry said to himself as he transfigured his coat from black to brown, "I aim to misbehave."


	2. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: JK Rowling can't take the sky from Joss Whedon.

The opening quote is taken from _No Power in the_ _'Verse_.

A/N: If your a nerd like me who is familiar with the official _Map of the_ _'Verse_ , I have made a few changes. First, I went through and gave every planet a scientific name that matches the real naming scheme today with lowercase letters for planets, capital letters for "protostars," and Roman numerals for moons, moving out from the centre. This gives me a much more intuitive sense of the layout of the system than the official names, and in-story, Harry is more familiar with these scientific names and will use them in parallel with the official ones.

Second, I made some changes to the fan timeline in _The Verse in Numbers_ (which is based on the Map) because some of the terraforming dates didn't fit the pattern. Miranda (Blue Sun Jb) was terraformed in 2502, not 2433. Rubicon (White Sun g) was terraformed in 2255, not 2519. And New Canaan (Blue Sun c) was terraformed in 2435, not currently in progress.

Finally, in this story, I write "the Verse" without the apostrophe, because it looks better, and it doesn't refer to the whole universe, anyway.

I've written up a proper outline for this story since I wrote the Prologue because I learnt my lesson with the _Arithmancer_ Series. That was a lot of fun, but it went on way too long. For this one, the outline was surprisingly short: only 26 chapters to wrap up the major plot threads, although it's very much subject to change.

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

 _Leaving Burnet (Blue Sun b I)_

 _2521_

" _Somehow, some way, we're bringing down the Alliance, once and for all. Any of you don't want to be party to what I got planned, you're welcome to get off at the next stop. But if you stay, you do what I say, no questions asked. I'm tired of running. It's time to turn around, stand our ground, and be counted."_

* * *

 _New Canaan (Blue Sun c)_

Simon Tam stepped off the deck of _Serenity_ , leading his sister with his arm around her shoulders. For her part, River just stared at the ground without looking back. Simon almost didn't look back either. He'd given up on most of the crew. He only spared a look at Kaylee over his shoulder. He could see the pain on her face, but she wasn't moving. The woman was too loyal for her own good—not even to Mal, but to _Serenity_. _Serenity_ was a good old girl, but she wasn't for him anymore. Or for River.

Their cargo floated down beside them, and Simon looked out to scan the horizon. Burnet had been decently built up, but just one planet over, New Canaan was truly a frontier world, full of dirt roads and wood-framed buildings—like a lot of planets he'd seen in his time with the crew. He'd never wanted to live on one, but by now, he had resigned himself. He was more worried about how River was taking it.

Behind him, the third crew member who was getting off was not so stoic.

"Zoe, be reasonable," Inara pleaded. "You don't want River being around Emma, but you don't mind taking her into an active war zone?"

Zoe looked out at the three of them standing on the ground as she held her daughter. She barely glanced at Inara. "Even if I wanted to, I don't see anyone getting off who I trust to take her," she said coldly. "At least if I have her with me, I can keep in control."

"Is that really how you're rationalising it?" Inara said. "Simon, will you back me up, here?"

Simon turned around and looked back. All of the crew were gathered at the top of the cargo ramp: Mal, Zoe and Emma, Jayne (somehow), Kaylee, and the two new ones, Bea and Iris. "What about Iris?" he asked, looking Zoe in the eyes. "She has the same triggers in her head that River does. More, probably, since I got River out before they were done with her. She only got lucky that Kalista didn't get a chance to use them on Burnet. No offence," he nodded to Iris.

Iris. An Operative rescued from the same facility that had tried to turn River into a weapon. She was more stable and looked a lot more normal than when they'd found her, but Simon had no doubt that she could kill them all just as easily as River could.

But Iris just shook her head. "I know what I am," she said. "I'm a weapon. That's what they made me, and now, I'm going to turn it back on them. I'm here to take down the Alliance. If Zoe wants me to stay away from Emma, that's her prerogative."

"Plus, now that we know what Kalista can do, we can be more careful of her," Bea added.

Zoe raised an eyebrow at Simon as if to say, _Your move._

"You shouldn't have to live like that, Iris," Simon said. "River, tell her."

"It's my choice," River said absently. "I could get off with you if I wanted, but I want to stay with the ship."

Simon did a double take before he figured out that River was reading Iris's thoughts—though she was speaking for both of them; she'd just made the opposite choice. Iris remained stoic.

Inara came down the ramp beside him and River. She looked defeated. Simon looked over the remaining crew again. He didn't bother arguing with Kaylee any more. They'd already had their fight. When his eyes met hers, she just said, "I'm sorry, Simon."

"Yeah…Me too," he answered.

"Look," Mal spoke up. "I'd say we're parting on about as good a terms as we can under the circumstances. You got honest qualms 'bout what we're planning to do, Doctor, and I can respect that. That just ain't gonna fly on _Serenity_ anymore. As long as we don't see you fighting for the other side, we aren't gonna have any trouble in the future. Hell, we might even come back for a visit if we get the chance. But for now, we got business to take care of. Till then, good luck to you."

Simon nodded to him, but didn't otherwise acknowledge him.

"Good luck to you too," Inara said. Mal didn't acknowledge her.

"River, do you have anything to say?" Simon said.

"He is coming," she hissed.

Mal, who was about to close the cargo bay door, stopped. Even now, he wasn't about to ignore a last-minute warning from River. "Who's coming?" he said.

"The ghost."

"Who?"

"The Lost Boy. Looking for a home that doesn't exist anymore."

"What are you talking about?" Mal said suspiciously, and Simon wanted to know the same thing. Was she talking about one of the crew?

River smiled and said in a creepy, sing-song voice, "We're off to see the wizard…"

"You know what she's talking about, Doc?" Mal asked.

"No, this is a new one, Captain," he said. "River, who's the wizard?"

River suddenly jolted and said, "What wizard?"

"What—The one you were just talking about!"

"I didn't say anything."

"But—" Simon sighed and shook his head, looking back up at Mal. "Sorry, I've got nothing."

"Ah. Well, then…" Mal pressed the button to close the ramp. "Good luck."

"You'll need it," River called after him.

A few minutes later, Simon, River, and Inara and their cargo were cleared away, and _Serenity_ lifted off, flying off to God knew where. "Well, that's it, then," Simon said. Mal was off trying to take down the Alliance, using methods Simon couldn't condone, even if Mal himself didn't approve of Mericourt and blowing up space liners. He was sure to do something violent and terroristic sooner or later. His girlfriend, a good friend with a baby, and a scoundrel he inexplicably still liked were running along after him, probably straight into serious danger. Who thought it would come to this?

River looked sullen. She might have actually taken it the worst of them, since her getting kicked off the ship wasn't her fault. Or he supposed none of them had truly been kicked off. Simon just couldn't accept Mal's plans; Zoe didn't was to see River's face around her daughter, and Mal and Inara couldn't look each other in the eye after he learnt about Fiddler's Green.

River broke away from Simon and put her arm around Inara's shoulders. Inara started to sniffle. "It's okay, Inara," River said. "We'll see them again."

Inara turned to stare at her. "Did your visions tell you that?" she said hopefully.

"No. They didn't need to," River said. "It's what my heart tells me."

Simon's mouth dropped open a little. Sometimes, even after all these years, his _meimei_ could still surprise him. He sighed softly. "Come on," he said. "Let's get out of public before we attract too much attention."

Their exile on New Canaan, despite the poverty of the planet, wasn't too bad. Inara's status as a companion helped them get housing, and Simon's status as a doctor helped them get enough money to pay for it, since pickings were slim in her line of work here. Once they got on their feet, they'd have to seriously think about travelling again, especially since Kalista was still after River, but for now, they could try to settle in and catch their breaths. Maybe Simon could even help some people properly here, he thought. At least as long as he didn't almost get burned as a witch again.

But fate was a fickle thing, and it soon became clear that they wouldn't be settling in for long as they thought.

* * *

Harry's ship touched down on New Canaan, and he could have kissed the ground when he stepped out, dust and all. It wasn't that he didn't like flying; quite the opposite. It was just that it had been damned hard to get onto Burnet and even harder to get off of it again, what with the Alliance soldiers crawling all over it. He thanked Merlin he hadn't been caught with the amount of discreet magic he'd had to do to grease the wheels to get out of that madhouse.

Worse, he had no idea if his targets had come here. He was making an educated guess based on their past movements and the fact that they'd had nearly as hard a time getting off of Burnet as he had, and there was a good chance they would have made a short hop to the next planet over to catch their breaths and regroup before moving on. Of course, even if they had been here, his targets were probably long gone by now. His only chance to find them was to hunt around and track down where _Serenity_ had gone next—and then hope they bloody well sat still long enough for him to catch up with them.

He looked around after he stepped off the transport. It was a cargo freighter barely more respectable than the one he was looking for, but it was the only semi-legitimate way out of Burnet that didn't involve running the Alliance gauntlet. New Canaan was a dusty, dirty world, sparsely colonised with only two hundred thousand people or so on it. Like too many planets on the Rim, it looked more like the Old West of Earth-That-Was than the modern, futuristic landscape of the Core Worlds. To think that people were still living like this after four centuries was almost enough to make him want to go after the Alliance himself.

But he couldn't stop to contemplate the scenery for very long. He had to get to work. The first place Harry looked was the customs and orbital traffic control office. That was the easy part; there was only one spaceport on the planet. If _Serenity_ had landed there, they would know. They could disguise their identities, but you couldn't disguise that fact that a Firefly Series 3 had landed at the port, and there weren't many of those still in service. And they might have come down in the port. They had on Burnet, which was a large part of the problem, from what he could gather.

If _Serenity_ hadn't come down at the spaceport, his job would be much harder. With a population as sparse as New Canaan's, they could have easily landed in the wilderness and ridden a Mule into town. Then, he'd have to try to find someone who had seen them and talked to them and try to figure out where they were going from that, and there was every possibility they had hidden their plans or spread misinformation. It was what he would have done, and if Reynolds and Washburne were competent soldiers…well, to be honest, they should have been covering their tracks better already with the amount of heat coming down on them, but he was sure they were only going to get harder to track from now on.

The spaceport was only marginally successful.

"Sorry, sir," the young manager said. "There haven't been any Firefly Series 3's checking in here in the past three weeks."

"Are you sure about that?" Harry said.

"That's what the log says," he insisted.

"Of course it does, Mr. Lynn. But of course, records can always have errors in them." Can be faked, he meant. That was hardly a sure thing, but it paid to be thorough.

"I suppose so," Lynn said nervously. "But I assure you, Mr. Potter, we run a very tight operation here."

 _Not likely on a frontier planet like this_ , Harry thought, but he pursued a different line. "Easy there, son," he said in a laid-back sort of way. "I'm not with the feds. I'm just looking for some friends. It's hard because I'm not sure what name they're flying under, but I heard they came through here."

It was a calculated move, borne out of long years of experience in the Auror program, to draw Lynn out little by little. "Oh? Uh, these friends of yours," he said. "They wouldn't happen be wearing brown, would they?"

"They're good people," Harry said, pointedly not answering the question. "I'm worried they might be in a bit of trouble. They've got a kid with 'em, and I really want to see if I can do anything to help. Sparing no expense."

Lynn eyebrows rose, and he grimaced and muttered something under his breath in Chinese that Harry didn't catch. He got the message. "Look, Mr. Potter," he said, "if there's a ship not recorded in the log, its because they only touched down long enough to get supplies and took off again. Maybe two weeks ago."

Ah, he knew how to play _this_ game. "Thank you. That's good to know. I don't suppose they said where they were going, did they?"

He shook his head forcefully. "No, definitely not."

"Right. You said they went for supplies. Do you have any idea where they might've gone for them."

Lynn didn't answer, but his eyes were evasive.

"I'm going to be looking for the place either way, son," Harry said. "Besides, I might want some supplies myself."

He sighed and wrote down the names of a few shops for him.

"Thanks. So, how much did they pay you to keep quiet about this?"

He named a number that was higher than Harry expected, but not exorbitant. Harry mentally counted his money and estimated how much he could spare. If New Canaan didn't pan out, he'd have to break off and take a few more jobs. He told him, "I'll match that for you to keep quiet about my asking for them. I want to avoid the feds at least as much as you do."

Lynn was happy to take that offer, and Harry went on his way. He wasn't a hundred percent certain Lynn had told the truth, but his instincts said yes, and his instincts, after all these years, were still good.

* * *

The other hard part about this kind of detective work, Harry reflected, was that people's memories tended to be especially poor concerning people who had only passed through briefly a few weeks ago and who were trying their best to look unremarkable. It was a problem he had faced in his Auror days, but worse because the Verse was a much bigger place. Plus, he had to be careful about using any magic to help things along.

He asked around several places on Manager Lynn's list, and he got nothing. At a couple of others, the shopkeepers claimed to recognise the faces of some of the _Serenity_ crew in photos, but that was all. Manager Lynn's intel seemed to be good, though, because Harry finally got a lead from a shopkeeper whose name, oddly enough, was Mrs. Lin.

"Yes, _he_ looks familiar, Mr. Potter," she said, pointing at a picture of Jayne Cobb. "He was a big man in a funny hat. I remember because it looked like something my grandson would wear. He's eight."

"Yes, that sounds like him, alright," Harry said with a smile. "Do you recognise any of the others?"

"Hmm…her, maybe," Mrs. Lin said, pointing at Zoe Washburne. "I'm not sure. Are they friends of yours?"

"We travel in some of the same circles," Harry said truthfully. "Did they say anything about where they were going?"

"No. They were pretty tight-lipped, as I recall. Or maybe they were between jobs and really didn't know."

"That's alright, ma'am. Would you happen to know anyone else they might have talked to while they were in town?"

"No. Folk learn not to ask too many questions in times like these." She lowered her voice. "Not with the Alliance knocking on our door. They didn't say anything, I doubt anyone would ask."

Harry gave her what he hoped was a winning smile. "That's okay, Mrs. Lin," he said. "Thanks anyway."

"I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help, Mr. Potter," she said. He was just about to go when she spoke up again: "I suppose if _anyone_ knew something about your friends, it would be the new doctor in Shiloh."

He stopped cold, and his eyes widened a fraction. "New doctor?" he said.

"Yes. Didn't see him myself, but he came around about the same time as your friends. Might've even come with them, come to think of it. He was in town a few days helping our own doctor, and then he went over to Shiloh because they needed one."

 _Could I really be that lucky?_ he thought. _Wo de ma, of course I could. I_ _'m Harry Gorram Potter. My luck is always insane._ "I think that's exactly who I need," he said. "Thank you, Mrs. Lin."

Harry left the shop a little more optimistic and headed to the train station to buy a ticket to Shiloh. He didn't know why the Tams would have stayed behind here, so close to where they were last seen, but it was more than worth a look. Now, he had to think about how to approach this. If the new doctor really was Simon Tam, he was sure to be skittish. And with his sister being a Reader—hell, she might already know he was coming. He didn't know how Reading worked or whether Occlumency worked against it. He would have to tread carefully if he was to get close enough for them to allow him to test River Tam for magic.

* * *

Simon tried to flash a cheerful smile as he drew blood from the boy's arm. The child's mother stood anxiously behind him with a bit too tight a grip on his shoulder. He had a bad feeling this was going to be one of the hard cases: either impossible to treat, or worse, impossible to diagnose. Symptoms like "generalised weakness" and "loss of appetite" were a physician's worst nightmare because they could be caused by nearly anything, and they didn't give you any other clues.

For cases like this kid, he was stuck making guesses based on lifestyle, environment, and family history. A father working an industrial job on a border planet was a big red flag, so he immediately went to a blood test that would rule out some of the worst options. It only took a minute. Reading the printout, he was relieved, but it did nothing to reduce his frustration.

He put his smile back on and turned back to the mother and child. "Well, the good news is, it's not Bowden's," he said, which was a relief to them, too. "I don't see any obvious infections, either. It could be immunological or maybe genetic. I'd like to run a gene sequence over the weekend to check for that. In the meantime, I can give him something for his appetite and see if that helps. Come back on Monday, and we'll take another look, okay?"

"Of course, Doctor," the mother said. "Thank you."

Simon quickly filled the prescription, started the gene sequence, and sent the pair on their way. He sighed when they were out of sight. Back on Osiris, he could have done the genetic screening on the spot and got a white cell culture back from the hospital by closing time. On New Canaan, it would take a week. But still, these people needed a doctor, and they hadn't had any problem with River so far, so he could at least feel like he was actually doing good for once.

Luckily, his last few cases of the day were pretty simple. An injury that needed five stitches and a tetanus shot, a case of stomach flu, a regular checkup for an old woman's various health problems, and so forth. It wasn't too busy a day today, and he closed up on time.

After making sure everything was secure, he left the clinic, closing the door behind him. He was about to lock it, but he stopped when he saw a man standing there in the corner of his eye and turned to him. "Unless it's an emergency, we're closing up for the night," he told him.

The man just stood there. "Doctor Simon Tam?" he asked in an accent that was once called British.

Simon froze and looked the man up and down in a heartbeat. He was older, probably in his fifties. Black hair with wisps of grey and bright, green eyes. The brown coat could be good or bad, depending on whether he was with the Peacemakers, or if it was a ruse by an Operative. "Who wants to know?" he answered slowly as he tried to reach for his gun while still acting casual.

The man held up his empty hands and said, "I don't have a gun, Dr. Tam. And I'm not with the feds. If I were, I think this meeting would be a lot noisier."

Simon went for his gun anyway, but he held it lazily by his side. The man didn't seem offended by that, at least. "Maybe it would," he said. "How can I be sure? What are you doing here?"

"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Harry Potter."

Simon's memory twinged. The name sounded familiar. But no, he was pretty sure that was some obscure Earth-That-Was historical figure.

Potter continued, "As for what I'm doing here? I'll tell you the truth: I've been looking for a Reader, and your sister is the best lead I've found in the past seven years. I'd very much appreciate it if I could meet her."

Simon narrowed his eyes. That didn't sound like something the Alliance would come up with. Kalista might use a ruse, but it wouldn't be as unusual as this. A bounty hunter wasn't out of the question, though. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Potter," he tried.

The man scoffed: "I think I'm a little better informed than that, Doctor."

"Oh? And what do you think you know?"

"Damn near everything you can get off the public cortex, and a bit more gleaned from government servers. I know they did _something_ to River at the Academy—something that messed her up _and_ made her a target. I assume that second thing had something to do with Miranda."

Simon snorted. Someone back there was dumb enough to put a psychic in the same room as a government official with classified knowledge. "You're not exactly earing my trust bringing that up, Mr. Potter," he said.

"I _also_ know that River was a Reader before she went to the Academy," Potter continued. "And that she was a genius who was compared with Hermione Granger when she was still in primary school."

Simon inclined his chin and considered this man more closely. That was a comparison he hadn't heard in a long time—not since the Shepherd left the ship, for sure. That told him two things. One, Potter was _very_ well read with River's files—not a generic Browncoat or Peacekeeper—and two and probably less important, even with his accent, his use of "primary school" rather than "grade school" narrowed down the list of places he could be from. He considered his next line of questioning. "Say you're telling the truth," he said. "What do you want with a Reader?"

"I'm looking for my family, Dr. Tam," Potter said, surprising him. "It's a long story, but the important thing is that they've vanished so thoroughly that I believe there _has_ to be foul play involved. I've searched for years and haven't found them, and keep in mind, I found _you_ , so that should give you some idea of my capabilities."

Simon was taken back to those sleepless nights he'd spent searching for River, being told he was paranoid to think there was anything wrong, even though he couldn't so much as figure out where the Academy was as he plunged ever-deeper into a web of government secrets. If this was a lie, it was carefully calculated to play on his sympathies, with information not many people would know. Of course, that only made him more suspicious.

"I'm not armed, Doctor," the man said. "You can search me if you want."

That was exactly what Simon did next. He approached Potter, being sure to keep his own body between him and his gun, and patted him down thoroughly. He didn't have a gun. In fact, he didn't have much on him at all: just a wallet and some kind of coin purse. Simon stepped back and regarded him again. "You really don't carry a gun?" he asked.

"I learnt to take care of myself without one," he answered.

"And so you want, what? Just to talk to my sister?"

He nodded. "If I'm lucky, a few minutes' conversation is all I need. If it's not, we can talk abuot it. I wouldn't and probably _couldn_ _'t_ make either of you do something you didn't want."

Something didn't add up here, Simon thought. No gun, no pressure, and way too much information. Nobody acted like that out on the Rim. Potter wouldn't be on New Canaan without some kind of backup…And that meant it made more sense that he was the distraction.

With an effort, he forced himself to relax and holstered his gun. "I don't like people interfering with my sister, Mr. Potter," he said, "but if you aren't going to try anything, and you only need a few minutes, you can meet her."

He smiled easily. "Thanks, Dr. Tam."

"This way," Simon said. He moved quickly, putting a few steps between them, and raised a radio to his mouth, keeping one eye on the interloper. "Inara, can you come over to our apartment and help River get ready for dinner? We have a guest coming tonight," he said. He watched Potter as he put the radio down. He didn't seem to have noticed the code phrase.

He led Potter around the town in a roundabout path, the opposite way from how he would usually go home, making a three quarter circuit around the town. He glanced back at Potter every so often. Potter started frowning about halfway through. He didn't say anything, but he was probably on to him.

They were nearing home when Simon's radio crackled. "Inara?" he asked.

"Simon, River said she hadn't heard about any guests," Inara told him.

He stopped in mid-stride and glanced back at Potter. _"None?"_ he said. Had River missed him somehow?

"I might have misinterpreted, but I think that's what she meant."

"Well…I've still got the one," he said.

"I'll be sure to make enough for him, then."

"Got it. We're almost there." Simon put the radio down, wondering when he had become this paranoid. True, a lot of these code phrases had been River's idea when they'd landed. Outwardly, he shrugged at Potter and kept going, this time heading straight home. Potter still looked perfectly laid-back, which wasn't an encouraging sign.

"So you two weren't the only ones to stay behind on New Canaan?" Potter asked.

Simon briefly considered denying it. Inara's prestige and ability to conceal her connections as a Companion were one of their greatest assets, but he'd find out soon enough. "A few of us decided to go our separate ways, yes," he said. Potter didn't press the subject, and a minute later, they were at his and River's apartment. "Inara?" he called as he opened the door, putting his hand back on his gun, just in case.

Inara was there in the living room. "Simon," she said cheerfully. "How was your day?"

"A little unusual," he said. "Inara, this is Harry Potter. Mr. Potter, Inara Serra."

"It's good to meet you, Mr. Potter," Inara greeted him.

"Pleasure," Potter said, shaking her hand with an oddly frosty manner. She furrowed her brow. Something was definitely off about him.

Simon pushed through it. "And my sister is…?" he raised an eyebrow at Inara.

"River, honey, could you come out here?" Inara called.

"I told you, there's no one coming—" they heard her call from her bedroom. Still, the door opened, and she came out, but River stopped in her tracks when she saw Potter. They both froze, staring intently at each other. Then, River _screamed._

" _AHHHHH! ZOMBIE!"_


End file.
